With a journey of 65 km to Angers today we opted for a late start of 9.00am. David would have preferred a later start ... as usual. He's been in construction all his life and now being newly retired, he wants to sleep in.
The day started with the usual breakfast at the hotel. These are quite reasonably priced between 8 and 11 Euro, and are generally very filling. The ride out of Saumur was easy given the hotel was right on the route. We rode alongside the river through parks and very good bike paths for the first few kilometres. Unfortunately, we struck hills early in the day ... before the body had warmed up and the brain had adapted my pain receptors to accept it. Fortunately, the wind was negligible and stayed that way for the remainder of today's ride. We've planned well ... we've had very few Westerly winds affecting our ride, other than a few hours of headwinds early in our trip. OK, maybe just plain luck!
The hills led to some good downhill riding allowing me to suck in some oxygen, then up hills again. Overall we had about 20 km of up and down to travel this morning, however, only a few were really that daunting.
We were travelling through the French countryside for much of the morning, with a few crops being grown for what seemed like household use. We came across a great example of companion planting, with rows of marigolds next to a vegetable plot ... to stave off insects that would normally eat the vegetables.
We were ready for a coffee by the time we entered Gene's. It seemed that the local pool hall filled with local hustlers too drunk to play at 11.00am, was the only place serving coffee. No other foods were available so we shared a bag of potato chips. A bonus was that the shop seemed to sell every flavour of vape imaginable!
After travelling on the south side of the Loire for what seemed like days, we crossed to the north side at Saint Mathurin-sur-Loire. It seemed like a trendy town with plenty of tourists ... we rode on!
In search of lunch, we went off-piste and off-route and found ourselves travelling on a busy road for a few kilometres to La Dagueniere. Unfortunately, despite promises of rose wine to soothe frayed nerves, there was only a small cafe open ... which didn't look appetising, let alone have a well-stocked bar. We rode on.
Today's highlight was the self-driven ferry across the L'Authion canal. We loaded all the bikes on, with 5 grown men and pulled a chain secured to the other side of the canal to traverse it. Brilliant ... until halfway across we noticed the 365kg weight limit ... we were up to about 600 kgs! We didn't sink.
We were now on an alternate Eurovelo 6 route taking us into Angers. The main route bypasses Angers. This alternate route was the highlight of the day. We travelled along gravel tracks, single-path tracks, and even a track through an old slate quarry (Angers is famous for black slate).
We arrived in Angers at around 2.00pm and the hotel had our rooms ready, so after checking in we headed in different directions to explore the town. Like every town in this part of France, surprised surprise, I found a Cathedral and a Chateau. Both were built to overlook the town, and both were very impressive. Like many other top attractions of the architectural kind, we find most under some sort of restoration or repair ... understandably so with most being built from the 11th to 16th centuries. The cost of this work must be significant, however seeing how much history is attached to these treasures, it's fantastic to witness.
There are only so many ways you can photograph chateaus and cathedrals!
Italian dinner tonight so we ate pizza. But we are sophisticated ... we drank red wine with it!
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